Paper short abstract:

This presentation intends to describe the ways of dwelling in the hinterland of Piauí, state of Northeast Brazil, from the description of the work of small farmers and the relationship they establish with cattle, environment and the "rhythm of the waters" in a region known by the absence of rainfall and modern technological resources. .

Paper long abstract:

The state of Piauí, in northeastern Brazil, is one of the poorest regions of the world. The climate, the vegetation and even the local customs are marked by the almost complete absence of rains. Due to its long extension and low population, traditionally, the economy of the hinterland of Piauí was based on extensive livestock production.

Since the arrival of the first cattle in the seventeenth century by the hands of Portuguese colonizers in Brazil, the same breeding techniques are employed by local farmers. But if during the period of colonization Piauí was the biggest producer of beef in Brazil, nowadays can´t compete with a global and technified cattle raising.

Without fences or pastures, livestock in the hinterland of Piauí are traditionally let loose in the fields. The activities of farmers are, fundamentally, marked by the "rhythm of the waters": as herds move during the dry season searching for water and food, cowboys move to hunt them down for slaughter.

This presentation intends to analyze how the relationship between farmers, cattle and the "rhythm of the waters" in the hinterland of Piauí developed a way of dwelling in the world that, by resisting the technological innovations, actualizes traditions. Based on ethnography on the work of farmers, it aims to describe knowledge, discourses and practices that produce landscapes, displacements, local economy, specific technologies and even mechanisms to deal with the adversities of the climate and the environment.

Paper short abstract:

Since the late 2000s Turkey's Mass Housing Administration has produced rural dwellings in addition to urban housing. Both drawing on and diverging from model villages built in the 1930s, which idealized a modern countryside, the new projects impose urban models on villages and rural landscapes.

Paper long abstract:

When Bülent Ecevit, a legendary center-left Turkish politician, was fighting a serious illness in a hospital bed in 2003, one of his requests from the newly-elected government was the continuation of the ongoing village-city projects in northern Turkey. In these projects, 5-10 villages would be clustered around a "central village," making modern infrastructure and social services accessible to all. Ecevit first imagined them in the 1970s, but village-cities had their precedent in a series of model village projects developed in Turkey by the reformist governments of the early twentieth century. The intention was to improve the condition of rural areas by envisioning that peasants would live in model homes and work in small industries adjacent to rationally planned rural settlements.

Although situated in political polar opposites, the conservative government of the time adopted the idea, but gave it a slight twist. In late 2000s Turkey's Mass Housing Administration included a number of "agricultural-villages" to its busy program of mass and luxury housing development. These villages would offer "contemporary alternatives" to regions which suffer from migration, losing significant amount of their workforce to big cities. This paper critically analyses the politics that tie the three projects together. It argues that while the earlier models followed modernist ideals where the countryside offered an escape from the congested industrial city, with the "agricultural-village" projects the village is imagined as a peripheral yet integral part of existing urban formations, signaling the end of contemporary rural landscapes in Turkey.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to problematize and discuss how lifestyle migration dwellings incorporate both living spaces, and surrounding areas in the rural regions. This paper will examine the possibilities to expand the meanings of rural dwelling through exploring lifestyle migration to rural areas.

Paper long abstract:

Present Swedish rurality faces great socio-economic struggles due to depopulation and post-industrialization processes. An effect of this is a decline in employment possibilities, which might lead rural people to move or commute to urban areas. Simultaneously, rural areas are targets for privileged lifestyle migration and second home ownership by people from urban areas, as well as nationals from other European countries, for instance Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands etc. They might either dwell temporarily or seasonally, or come to settle in the rural regions, on both a long-term and a short-term basis. This could lead to transient and mobile populations in Swedish rural areas, which have different effects on the local communities, and individual lives. This paper aims to problematize and discuss how migrant rural dwellings incorporate both living spaces, and surrounding areas. More specifically, the rural will be examined as a combined site for dwelling, recreation, and desired lifestyles. When studying this, we will highlight how this phenomenon may be initiated both by the lifestyle migrants themselves, and by initiatives and marketing strategies from regional and local authorities and private enterprises. In a practical everyday life of being a migrant in a rural setting, the expected possibilities might be limited by local conditions, such as power orders, and difficulties in co-existence with local inhabitants. Drawing from ethnological knowledge production of rural studies and lifestyle migration studies, this paper will explore the possibilities to expand the meanings of rural dwelling among lifestyle migrants.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on Ghosh’s representation of different responses to ‘home’ as the spatial dimension of identity in the rural backdrop of the Sundarbans as place of dwelling: the tourist’s, ecologist’s, social worker’s beside the peasant insiders’ religio-cultural and socio-economic space.

Paper long abstract:

Dwelling in a rural landscape corresponds to identity with certain notions of inclusion and exclusion in its homemaking practices. The geo-political boundary of the ‘rural’ includes particular socio-cultural practices and itself being peripheral, remains engaged in a mute mutual conflict with the powerful and hegemonic ‘urban’ identity. This paper considers Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide as case study where the Sundarbans becomes the place of dwelling, and the fictional characters find the idea of ‘home’ as place of origin, as comfort zones, as escape destinations, as space of research and even as space of development. We attempt to show how the ‘insider’ peasants of the place are at home in the land of mangrove and rivers, whereas the ‘outsider’ urban characters find ‘home’ either in Rilke’s poetry, in language spoken at home, in the food-scape, and even in the subject of research and development. The novel ends with a conversation where an American-Indian cetologist observes: “for me, home is where the Orcaella (the river dolphins) are” and she is complemented by an elderly social-worker Indian lady—“For me, home is wherever I can brew a pot of good tea” (HT, 400). This conversation certainly showcases the novelist’s urge to focus on the complex nature of human thoughts around the interrelated ideas of ‘home’ and the ‘self’ in the ‘rural’ canvas of the Sundarbans.

Paper short abstract:

We examine material from an Internet forum for women living in Swedish rural areas. The aim is to study different kinds of femininities visible here. What kinds of subject positions and identity constructions are made possible? What do the negotiations of the position ‘rural girl’ look like?

Paper long abstract:

The Internet forum Glesbygdsgirls - which meaning in English could be translated to Rural girls or Remote girls - is a Swedish forum on Facebook, for women living in, or in other ways are connected to, sparsely populated and rural areas of Sweden. The Internet forum has an activist approach, linked to power relations between the urban and the rural, but is open for all kinds of rural experiences in the everyday, not necessarily political ones.

This paper has an examining approach where we will try out some analytical ideas from our research conducted in this forum. The aim of our research is to study the different kinds of femininities visible in the forum. What kinds of subject positions and identity constructions are made possible? What do the negotiations of the position 'rural girl' look like in this particular space of social media?

The methodology is so called nethnography; the study is based on observations of the members' contributions in the forum, as written words and photographs, as well as the communication between the members, due to certain contributions. The material is saved and organised in screen shots. Empirical themes include specific everyday actions due to rural living, driving forces and ideals of real enthusiasm intertwined with possibilities of rural actions. Other themes are contested rural dwellings where photos depicting possibilities of rural livelihoods interlock and negotiate discourses of urban space as the only place for women to lead meaningful lives.

Paper short abstract:

In scenic Glenmara, prized by tourists and conservationists, the community sustains itself by managing remoteness and caring for others. What forms of intimacy and belonging are possible here? This paper offers stories of “remote proximity” to show how care emerges through various forms of distance.

Paper long abstract:

The west coast of Scotland is a landscape shaped by starkly unequal patterns of landownership, cycles of rural depopulation, and the desiring gaze of its many visitors: from chroniclers and painters to royalty and middle-class mountaineers. Today, the region has relatively few agricultural or industrial affordances, and continues to be prized for its dramatic scenery, rugged terrain, and perceived remoteness - characteristics that have inspired conservationists to classify nearly one fifth of Scotland's land area as "wild land." Despite associations with an empty, untouched landscape, wild land is often inhabited and actively stewarded by small rural communities that are economically dependent on tourism and outdoor recreation. This paper visits one such community to ask what it takes to build a life in a place where the failures and fantasies of the past continue to shape the economic possibilities of the present. In scenic Glenmara, managing remoteness and caring for others - visitors, animals, and the land - are forms of labor essential to sustaining individual and collective life. Based on 16 months of dissertation fieldwork on the west coast of Scotland, this paper argues that rural life is fundamentally concerned with producing distance and care at multiple scales. What does it mean to care remotely, and what forms of intimacy are made possible in this relation? Inviting us to consider the relationship between intimacy, belonging, and proximity, this paper offers stories of "remote proximity" that show how care in Glenmara is coordinated through distance rather than in spite of it.

Paper short abstract:

I will examine the production of value in relation to place, with three empirical examples: former single-industry communities, suburbs and rural migrants. Being at home in peripheralized areas on a regular basis is constructed as contested dwellings, how can this be described and deconstructed?

Paper long abstract:

Discussing results from my research in former single-industry communities in a region of Sweden, research on ex-modern suburbs and rural migrants I will examine the production of value in relation to place. There are two darkening discourses connected to these places; one concerning the backward, unemployed, uneducated (man) in former single-industry communities, one concerning the depending (or violent) migrant in ex-modern suburbs and lately also migrants in a rural context. Both stories tend to obscure real social and economic problems and the solution is sought for in the darkened places themselves, not in the gaze of the center or global power relations.

The social geography in my examples suggests that power is, like never before, a matter of place, of peripheralization and distribution of value.

Collective action, social control and cooperations in these areas are not visible or regarded as useless, due to peripheralization processes and a deeply rooted individualistic norm. I argue that the collective structures might as well be something to recognize as a resource for social sustainability. Right now it can as well become the opposite, since inhabitants in peripheralized areas often turn to anti-democratic movements in lack of other recognition.